On the Battle of Moytura

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546

" Statistics of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ;
May, 1866 :" from Alexander Thorn, Esq.

" Cassell's Illustrated History of England," Vols. III. and IV. :
from J. Godkin, Esq.

MONDAY, JUNE 25, 1866.
Sir "W. R."W. "Wilde, M.D., Vice-President, in the Chair.

The following gentlemen were elected members of the Academy : —
David R. Edgeworth, Esq., and John O'Hagan, Esq.

Sir ~W. R. Wilde read the following paper : —

On the Battle op Mottuba.

The author brought under the notice of the meeting the first of
a series of communications he was about to make to the Academy upon
the topography of the Battle-fields of Moytura, and the monuments
still standing upon those memorable localities, and which were some
of the earliest places referred to in the Irish annals.

He mentioned that there were two battle-fields of this name, one
was the northern or the " Moytura of the Fomorians," in the parish of
Kilmacatranay, in the county of Sligo, adjoining the north-western end
of the county of Roscommon, and extending from Lough Arrow to the
strand at Ballysadare ; but with which he would not deal on the pre-
sent occasion. The other, on the southern site, or " Moytura Conga" —
of which Sir "William exhibited a large map, and pointed out the dif-
ferent localities on it — occupies the western extremity of the great
plain at the junction of the counties of Mayo and Galway, ex-
tending from the Fairy Hill of Enockmaha, near Tuam, to Benlevi,
the first of the mountain range, which, rising from the waters of Loughs
Corrib and Mask, gradually ascend and stretch into the Partly, Joyce
Country, and Connemara mountains. This was the particular locality
to which he proposed to call the attention of the meeting, and said he
hoped on a future occasion to bring forward illustrations of the most
remarkable of the very ancient monuments which crowd around the
picturesque village of Cong, and occupy the northern sloping banks of
Lough Corrib, and the eastern borders of Lough Mask. This great plain
is nearly sixteen miles long, and the monuments occupy a space of about
five miles in breadth at its western end. It was originally called Magh
Nia, or Nemeadh, and in some works Magh Itha, before the celebrated
battle from which it took its historic name ; but at present it goes
by the Irish name of Ath Readh, or the unobstructed plain. Sir William
said : —

Prior to the date assigned by the Four Masters, A. M. 3303, for the
battle of Moytura Conga, the entries in our annals are comparatively
few, meagre, and of very doubtful chronology, and consist chiefly of
notices of cosmical phenomena, colonizations, pestilences, the clearing of

547

the plains, the erection of forts, raths, and cashels, and the battle of
Sleamhnai, Maighe Ithe, on the banks of Lough Swilly, in the county
of Donegal, between the Fomorians, the possessors of the island at that
period, and the newly arrived forces ofParthalon, the so-called Oriental
or Grecian leader. The Firbolgs, or Belgse, so called from their assumed
Belgic origin, next occupied the country, and established a Kingly Pen-
tarchy.

"When the Tuatha DeDannan, who were a Scandinavian and decidedly
a superior race, and who undoubtedly possessed a knowledge of metal,
established themselves in the north-east of Ireland, they demanded a
division of the kingdom from the Firbolgs ; and a meeting took place
between their respective ambassadors upon Magh Rein, on the shores of
Lough Allen, near Slieve-an-Icrin, in the county of Leitrim ; and upon
the latter refusing to accede to this modest request, the Tuatha De Dan-
nans marched westward, and, according to our histories, occupied the
plains of Southern Moytura ; and Nuadha, their king, with his staff,
took up his position on the heights of Benlevi, from which a view can
be obtained of the plains beneath to an immense extent, and a secure
retreat preserved towards the fastnesses in their rere.

The Firbolgs, under Eochy Mac Ere, their king, marched from Tara
to the eastern end of the plain of Nia, where it rises into the picturesque
hill of Knockma, now known as Castle Hacket, and where, according to
the legends of the land, the Fairy King Finvarra (the Oberon of Irish
Sylvan mythology) holds his court. From thence may be obtained one
of the grandest views in Ireland. To the east, the great plain stretches
beneath and around, from the hill of Knockroe to the towers of Athenry,
or City of the Ford of the Kings, and includes the Tuam of St. Jarlath,
the round tower of St. Benan, the beautiful abbey of Knockmoy, and the
ruined keeps of the De Burgos — to the south, the ships riding in the
Bay of Galway can be discerned in a clear day, and the Slievebloom
and Clare mountains ; and to the west the blue island-studded waters
of Lough Corrib, and in the far western background the Connemara
Alps, stretching from Lecanvre and Sheanapholia, with their clear-
cut edges, and their sides momentarily varying in tints from the mar-
vellous atmospheric effects of that region, round to the lofty peak of
Croagh Patrick, and the bulky form of Nephin, and even some of the
Achill mountains skirting Clew Bay, are all within view. Certainly, if
the son of Ere had an eye for the picturesque, or a soul for poetry, his
patriotism should have warmed when he viewed the fair scene which
was sought to be wrested from him by the invader.

On the summit of Knockma an immense cairn of small stones has been
erected over the remains of the female Coesair, the first of that great west-
ern chain of similar monuments that stretch from thence to the valley
of Maam, and -finally abut upon the shores of the Atlantic nearRenvyle.
Around this cairn, in the month of May, the ground is literally blue with
the flowers of the Oentiana verna. The battle is said to have been com-
menced on the 1 1th of June ; it lasted four days, and ended in the defeat
of the Firbolgs, and the death of their king, the pillar stone of whose

548

son is probably the long stone of the Tfeale. Nuada, the Dannan king,
lost hiB hand ; and from the circumstances stated in the Bardic legends
of an artificial arm having been supplied, he is ever after mentioned
in history as "Nuad of the Silver Hand." Whether Belor of the basilisk
eye, another well-known character in our early tales, was at the battle
of Southern Moytura is doubtful ; but all the legends respecting the
petrifying qualities of. his eye, and even where he stood, &c, at the
time of the engagement, are still related of the " Fothach Bua," or
great red giant. Mntan, the sage ; Edena, the poet-prophetess ; Dian-
checht, the physician; Credne, the artificer; Gobnen, the smith; and
all the Druid celebrities of early historic romance are said to have been
at this battle. The site of the fiercest combat, and that which is still
called Cath na Bmnen, or the Valley of " The Battle of the Butts," be-
cause it is said that, the weapons of the belligerents having been injured,
they fought with the butts, like the " Faigh-a-Ballaghs" of later days,
is still pointed out.

Several years afterwards the second battle, on the Northern Moytura,
was fought ; and after it, as well as on the occasion of the previous defeat,
the Belgse, or Firbolga, fled for security westwards, and entrenched them-
selves in those stupendous fastnesses of Arran, in Galway Bay — so that
even then we see that the destiny of the Celt was Westward. But that
they did not all go is manifest from the very marked characteristics of the
two races, the dark and the fair, still remaining in the West.

These few particulars and the foregoing brief sketch are worth men-
tioning, inasmuch as heretofore some misconception has occurred, and
some erroneous statements have been put forward by writers who have
jumbled up the two battles of Moytura, although many years took place
between them, and the intervening space from the Sligo to the Mayo
locality is about fifty miles. Between the western slopes of Knockma,
in the barony of Dunmore, to Shrule, and through the rich pastures of
the barony of Kilmaine, the plain is studded with forts and circular
raths, showing the early cultivation and comparatively dense population
of that district. As, however, we advance westward through the ba-
rony of Kilmaine, over the great plain where the limestone crops out
above the surface, in many places to the extent of several acres, the
grass-grown circles are replaced by immense cairns, artificially con-
structed caves, circles of standing stones, many of gigantic size, mono-
liths or pillar stones, and great duns, cashels or stone forts, resembling
some of those in Kerry and the Western Islands of Arran. All these
accumulate, and finally culminate into a narrow space of about four
square miles, the eastern line of which would run from the village of
Cross to the Ueale, and thence by Ballinrobe, to the western shores of
Lough Mask, and the narrow neck of land between it and Lough Corrib
to the waterport of Cong, where the wealth, taste, and liberality of our
distinguished church restorer, Mr. Guinness, have done so much to beau-
tify the landscape, to benefit the people, and to restore the crumbling
columns of that Abbey, wherein was preserved the greatest artistic, as

549

well as the most historic memorial of piety and skill to be found in
north-western Europe — the Cross of Cong that now adorns our Mu-
seum.

About forty years ago, our great Petrie, in company with our bard
and artist, Samuel Lover, visited this locality, and greatly regretted the
obliteration of many of the monuments which he expected to find there.
In 1838, O'Donovan, then an officer in the Ordnance Survey, under our
distinguished Academician, Sir Thomas Larcom — who for upwards of
forty years has been more Irish and more useful than many of the Irish
themselves — went over this locality ; but his observations thereon were
not as full as might be wished. O'Donovan, however, has left behind
him what is even more valuable than a mere enumeration and identifi-
cation of forts and cairns, in a translation, executed with that facility
of diction in which he excelled, of one of those metrical histories which
abound in our early literature, and which, although defective in the
romance of the epic, is more truthful in its history and topography than
the " Tain Bo Cuilne ;" but, like it, it was probably derived from varied
and earlier sources than the times of the transcriber or collector.

Having spent much of my youth in this memorable locality, where
my ancestors sheltered the ecclesiastics who fled with the Palladium of
the West, to which I have already referred, and having the honour to
own a small bit of this battle-field myself, I have during my occasional
visits to the country thoroughly investigated all these monuments on
Southern Moytura; and, as an instance of what may be done by local
investigation, I may mention that within the space of a single sheet of
the Ordnance Map I was enabled to point out no less than twelve most
interesting monuments previously unnoticed, consisting of forts, raths,
stone circles, caves, lisses, and cashels, &c, all of which will be
marked upon the new edition of that great work ; and upon a future
occasion I hope to be able to bring these and others in detail under the
notice of the Academy. I may also mention that, through the kindness of
my friend George Crampton, Esq., I have been supplied with a map and
measurements of Caher-MacTurk, the Dannan fort at Nympsfield, which
was removed at the time of the building of the glebe house there, nearly
fifty years ago : so that upon the whole we can even now enter upon
the consideration of the battle-field of Southern Moytura with a fair
prospect of success. The legendary lore and traditional accounts re-
specting this and other battle-fields, and the events for which they were
celebrated, have now almost ceased to exist. The locality can, how-
ever, be recognised by the topographer, and the monuments thereon
identified by the antiquary, while much of the old sagas may be culled
from the popular superstitions of the district, or gleaned from the tale,
surrounded as it is by all its incongruities, of the old Sennachie, whose
language one understands, and whose feelings one reverences. Yet,
although this traditionary and popular remembrance of the battle-field
affords no more information than can be gleaned from similar sources
respecting the raths of Tara, the monuments on the banks of the Boyne,

E. I. A. PROC. — VOL. IX. 4 C

550

the cahers of Arran, or the Round Towers, and several of the primitive
churches, and even the Norman castles throughout the country, there
are names attaching to this locality which serve to guide the painstak-
ing and skilled inquirer ; and the ancient Irish annals, and some manu-
scripts believed to be derived from very early sources, afford sufficient
materials for attempting now, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
an essay on a battle-field referred by our annalists to a period before the
Christian era.

To popularize Irish history, and familiarize our youth with incidents
such as the foregoing, will tend to the mental culture of the rising gene-
ration, and the preservation of our national monuments ; but until some
Scott, or some one endowed with even a fragment of his genius ; and
combining, as he did, the knowledge of the antiquarian scholar, the deep
research of the historian, the gifted tongue and feeling heart of the poet,
the subtle wit of the humorist, the dramatic powers of the novelist, the
knowledge of the . popular superstitions and modes of thought of his
countrymen, together with that rarest of all powers, the faculty of fus-
ing fiction and fact, so as to weave a romance common to humanity with
the historic incidents and characters of the past, we shall never have an
opportunity, notwithstanding our much greater materials, for vieing
with the literature of Scotland.

Sir 'William R. W. "Wilde exhibited plans of some of the subterranean
chambers he had discovered, and quoted several of the early authors on
the subject ofMoytura. He also said he intended dividing his commu-
nications on Moytura into three portions — a general sketch of the
battle-field, an historic account of the engagement, and a detailed de-
scription of the monuments still existing thereon.

Sir William R. W. Wilde brought forward, and made some remarks
upon, his paper on the Plunket MS., descriptive of the civil wars in Ire-
land, and styled " A Light to the Blind," which he had read to the Aca-
demy on the 27th June, 1859.

The following donation was presented : —

A perforated stone found at an earthen fort, adjoining Kilbride pa-
rish church, in the county of Wicklow : presented by J. S. Moore, Esq.,
of the Manor, Kilbride.

Thanks were returned to the donor.

The Academy then adjourned to the 12th of November.